


Out of the ash I rise

by likeafouralarmfire



Series: Becoming Root [1]
Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Root backstory, but there are (mild) violent ideations, no Shaw in this one but you'll find easter eggs from this series in my Shoot stories, part 1 of 2: the story will pick up again when she's 19, there's no violence onstage, this headcanon helps define Root in the rest of my work
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-19
Updated: 2017-03-19
Packaged: 2018-10-07 20:06:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10368408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likeafouralarmfire/pseuds/likeafouralarmfire
Summary: At twelve, Root is afraid of men. At sixteen, Root's not afraid of anything.





	

 

I

You’re twelve years old, and you’re afraid of monsters.

Not the kind that hides under your bed–an only child with a sick mom has no time for that–but the kind that wants to get into your bed. Worse yet–you’re afraid you might invite it in yourself.

 

* * *

 

It all started with your friend Hanna, with the two of you tucked into her bed in the dark, close enough to listen to her whispering about the boy she liked.

 _He’s so cute,_ she sighed, _but he’s a junior. He’ll never look at me._

You knew the boy she was talking about. He looked ordinary enough to you, but you were so entranced by the soap bubble of this intimacy with Hanna that you just waited for her to keep talking.

 _I just want to–I want–_ she drifted off for a moment, to a place you couldn’t follow.

 _What do you want?_ you prompted.

She whispered in your ear then, things that made your whole body blush. You thought about it–a boy’s tongue in your mouth, his hands on your skin–and a deep, unpleasant shiver ran through you.

 _You really want that?_ you asked. Hanna laughed at your disbelief.

 _You’re only twelve,_ she said. _When you’re fourteen, you’ll get it._

She leaned in and tousled your hair. Your heart pounded as you smelled her shampoo, felt her close and warm beside you. Squeezing your eyes shut, you tried to wipe away the terrifying image playing in your head: a boy lying in your place, kissing her.

 

* * *

 

Two months have passed since Hanna disappeared into the craw of a monster.

Since she’s been gone, the men and boys around you have seemed distorted and strange. You can only see their coarseness: stubble, rough jaws, harsh features and hard limbs. There’s something gone wrong about them: something that starts in them when they’re a little older than you and keeps getting worse and worse, until their bellies sag and their faces get sunken and hungry.

At night, you can’t stop thinking about Hanna, about what happened to her after the night she vanished. You think of Trent Russell and his smug, coarse face, and your brain spins out a parade of nightmares, each one as likely as the last. 

You can still remember the way her sheets smelled, the ghost of her handprint on your shoulder.

 

* * *

 

II

You are fourteen years old, and you’re afraid of your own body.

It’s like constant vertigo, living in this body that hasn’t felt like yours for the past year or two. Your hair has turned mousy and lank. Every part of your body feels disconnected and warped, like you stepped into a funhouse and can’t remember your own reflection. Every morning you look for your old self in the bathroom mirror. That girl is gone now.

Another girl is taking her place. A new girl, one who you know, any day now, will start to want the boys in your class who have started, one by one, to shoot up to an alien, gangly height. A few already have peach fuzz, or worse. The prospect of kissing one of them is still repulsive, but you're sure in time that will change. Your body will betray you, and you’ll want some boy to press his mouth, his body, against yours, to lie down and let him touch you in deep and secret places. 

The months drag by. It doesn’t happen. One by one, the girls in your class gravitate toward the boys, joining a dance to music you can’t hear.

Until one day, as you watch a pretty girl from your algebra class drape herself over a boy at a lunch table near the bench where you’re eating a peanut butter sandwich, it occurs to you–with a start–that it’s possible you never will. You’ll never have to invite a man to climb into bed next to you, to scratch you with his rough face, to press you down with his suffocating weight. The music might never reach your ears. 

Just at the thought, a relief rushes through you that makes you dizzy–a dizziness that might as well be love.

 

* * *

 

It’s true; you never do learn to like boys. Instead, something else happens.

It starts innocently enough. Late in your freshman year, there’s a French braid craze, and the best braider in school is Elena Ruiz, a sophomore with three younger sisters and the most beautiful black hair you’ve ever seen. At lunch, she sits at the outside tables, holding court and teaching other girls to braid. The onlookers drape over each other with careless intimacy. 

You’ve always been a loner yourself–except for Hanna–and mostly, you like it that way. Computers make more sense and don’t need emotional maintenance. Still, something in you clenches with jealousy at the girls who play with each other’s hair and lean close to share little nothings. 

Elena sees you lingering nearby and smiles. She tilts her head to silently call you over. Close up, you can see the warm glow of her skin, the black depth of her eyes, the softness of her lips.

 _It’s Sam, right?_  she asks, looping a band around the base of the braid she's just finished and tapping the girl's shoulder twice so the girl hops up. _Want your hair braided?_

You blush a little and nod. She motions to the bench in front of her, to the now-empty spot between her knees.

It’s warm where you sit down, from the last girl. Elena’s knees rest against your shoulders as she begins to weigh your hair in her hands. When she pauses, your heart flutters: you wonder whether your hair is too short–it’s only been a few months since you started growing it past your shoulders–or too greasy, since you didn’t wash it this morning. But the pause isn’t long: in a second, a thick lock pulls tightly at your scalp as Elena begins to work.

While she pulls in strand after strand, chatting with her friends as if your hair under her fingers were nothing, she grazes your temples, the soft spots behind your ears. The brush of her fingers makes your stomach tighten with something strange and pleasant.

After that, the dreams start coming. In the first one, Elena’s fingers stroke more deliberately over the nape of your neck. In the second, they draw a path to your shoulders. Then over your throat, and so on–further down–until there’s no mistaking what’s happening to you.

You’ve heard of people like that, of course. The God you haven’t believed in for years thinks it’s an abomination–or more to the point, the people around you do. That doesn’t hold much water with you, but one thing’s for sure: by now, you know how to keep a secret.

 

* * *

 

One more secret before you turn fifteen. A good one, this time.

The moment is precise. You wait until the day that makes you the same age as Hanna–and then you put into motion the sequence of events that will wipe the man who killed her–the monster–off the face of the earth.

 

* * *

 

III

You’re sixteen years old, and you’re afraid of nothing.

When you were twelve, the way men look at you now would have made you afraid; as it is, it’s mostly irritating. By now you’ve grown out of your awkward phase–your body has grown into its sweet spot and your hair has darkened into a determinate brown, and on some unexpected morning you realize there’s a pretty girl looking back at you in the mirror–but you kind of wish you could go back to the growing pains and acne. The way boys and men follow you on the street with their eyes, talk to you a little too politely, makes your skin crawl.

Then again, the same power that makes men polite to you can be useful at times. And that’s why, at this moment, you’re standing in the middle of a field just off a backroad with Bobby Mason, pointing a handgun at a cardboard box.

 _Easy does it,_ he coaches you, his hands correcting your position. He shows you how to aim at the paper target, then steps back.

Bobby is the kind of boy who likes to open doors for women, the kind who calls his parents Mother and Daddy and his teachers ma’am and sir. His name describes him perfectly: he has a big, awkward Adam’s apple that bobs and quivers when he swallows–which he does a lot around you. Bobby. Bobby.

His girlfriend, on the other hand? Raquel has the longest, straightest hair you’ve ever seen, and legs for days. Her thighs are mathematically perfect. You’ll never understand how pretty girls end up with boys like Bobby.

And yet, here you are, with another girl’s boyfriend, about to fire a gun for the first time. You wanted desperately to learn to shoot–and he seemed like the easiest target. As a tutor, that is.

 _Whenever you’re ready,_ he says.

Your heart beats hard as you cock the gun and pull the trigger. 

A bolt of sound makes a palpable hole in the air around you and sets your ears ringing. The bullet has punched a hole straight through the cardboard box; you can see a pinprick of late afternoon light from the other side. Your hands are buzzing and the bones in your shoulders feel rattled. A shiver of heat and raw power spreads through your body.

 _Pretty great, huh?_ says Bobby in a dangerously soft voice. He rests a hand on your lower back. The touch sets you on edge, so you squeeze your eyes shut for a second to visualize his face before firing the gun again. You imagine the bullet tearing through the vapor of your projection, its kickback erasing his leer like a puff of smoke. 

The holes you’ve shot into the box stare back at you like a pair of eyes. The hollowness makes you think of another man: Trent Russell, dead for two years now, thanks to you. Now, with the thrill of lethal power hot in your hands, you wish you could kill him again, shoot him yourself. Squeezing your eyes shut again, you project the image of his face onto the paper target on the box.

Your eyes snap open and you fire--twice--right between his eyes.

The sun lights the fields on fire as you empty round after round into the faces of the monsters--the men--who used to scare you. They’re fragile things, after all--more vulnerable than you, with soft bulbs in their throats and soft bundles between their legs. The same wet eyes and delicate flesh.

Bobby drives you home in silence. He backed off after it became clear that this was not going to be a romantic outing, and even now, he seems a little afraid of you--of something he’s seen in you now, something he didn’t expect. His throat bobs and he doesn’t look you in the eye when he says goodbye.

 

* * *

 

 

Lying in bed that night, your limbs sore and humming, you think of Hanna. You think about the night you lay next to her while she whispered to you about the boy she liked. The way your heart pounded. Looking back, you don’t think you were afraid that night; you just wanted to be close to her and didn’t know how.

When she first disappeared, you couldn’t stop thinking about what had happened to her. Tonight, for the first time, you set that aside and wonder what would have happened if she hadn’t been taken from you. Would it have been Hanna whose gentle, casual touches woke up your body, Hanna in the dreams that taught you what you were? Would you have become the girl you are, a girl who killed a man in cold blood and hasn’t felt remorse for a second since?

Would you have become a monster?

They’re empty questions, and they’re not the ones that matter. What matters now is what comes next. 

It won’t take you long to get your own gun and stockpile of cardboard boxes to improve your aim. In time, you’re going to make your name as a hacker, and you’re going to accrue enough money to start a new life for yourself the second you get the chance. In the meantime, you’ll keep drawing dots on the world map you keep in the locked box under your bed--the same place you’ll keep your gun, soon--to mark the places you’ve read and heard about, the places you’re most desperate to see. As if marking each spot gives you a foothold, something concrete to hold on to. 

It will all happen. You just have to wait for the right moment.

You’re sixteen years old, and you have decided never to be afraid again.


End file.
